


Brittle Year

by vibishan



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 20:31:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vibishan/pseuds/vibishan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This Christmas, he isn't dead and she isn't dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brittle Year

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Blacksquirrel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blacksquirrel/gifts).



This Christmas, he isn’t dead, and she isn’t dead.

There are others who are dead. A spray of bullets in Cairo, a canyon in Kazakhstan, a stolen tractor in Guatemala. He’s had a busy year. A missed connection in Riyadh, a whisper in Columbia, a dumb misstep in Angola. At least her hair has already gone grey. 

_I knew it was too soon to promote you_. She doesn’t say it every time, but she says it often. It doesn’t matter. They need people on the ground, and they only lose their sticky-green sap one way. She’s never wrong, either, but sometimes they get away with it. Every flag she doesn’t fold is like a little Christmas present.

Perhaps she should send out a memo about that. Then again, it probably wouldn’t stop him showing up at the same ice skating rink where her granddaughters are practicing, toffee bark in one hand and ridiculous invitations in the other.

“I don’t skate,” she informs him, hands tucked firmly into her hand muffler, though she doesn’t grip the miniature pistol inside any more than she always does, when she brings herself near the girls.

“I won’t let you fall, ma’am. Promise.” The smile is a little too cheeky to come from his primary arsenal, a little too bright. The edges of it aren’t slick and gold with secrets he knows you want – he knows better. He has snowflakes on his eyelashes.

“You don’t let me do _anything_ , Millbury.” It’s a cover he hates, and the way his mouth pinches for half a second and then curls into a much brighter, candy-coated curve reminds her of Katie sticking her tongue out. But he makes her pay for it, stalwartly pretending to be an ebullient lush of an up and coming corporate stockman until the zamboni machine comes to smooth the ice down. As Katie and Jeanine skate over, he makes his overly sentimental goodbyes. 

He tucks the toffee in her handbag, counting on her unwillingness to disengage from the muffler just to stop him. He’s appallingly right, daring to kiss her very lightly on the cheek when he leans in to plant the treat with a whispered, “Happy Christmas, ma’am.”

He aims for nonchalant as he strides away, melding easily into the crowd, but she couldn’t miss the awkward bunch of his scapulae if she’d tried to watch him through the muffler’s thick fake fur.

*

This Valentine's Day, he isn’t dead, and she isn’t dead. He is in Rio, doing god only knows what instead of lying low like he’s supposed to be, but it hasn’t made the news (even in Rio, and she’s only checked twice), so she supposes it counts as lying low for him. She is on a day trip to Bath with her husband. They hold hands and she wonders what he would say about the medusa, wreathed in bronze-green venom. She can’t imagine. 

*

This Easter, he ought to be in a hospital, but he still isn’t dead, and she isn’t dead. He is, of course, _not_ in a hospital. Her hands feel colder than they should, sticky with memories, and she aches in places that were never her wounds. She tries to sleep, dreams in German with Russian accents weighing it down like piled snowdrifts bending an old roof, and when she wakes up, she’s already given up the idea of letting him convalesce in his own obstinacy the way he deserves.

She visits him while her family is at Church. They won’t mark her absence. She’s trying not to miss so many egg-hunts, but she’s done enough of kneeling and begging and hoping to last her quite a few lifetimes.

She can hear rustling as she waltzes in the door – concierges all over are as eager to help sweet old ladies as they are sniffling young beauties, and that little bit of constancy is a comfort – as he reaches for a weapon.

“Would you kill me if I were the cleaning lady, double-oh-seven?” she asks dryly, rounding the corner.

“You _are_ the cleaning lady,” he retorts, and she supposes it’s true enough. She cleans up their messes, and she cleans up them when they’re too chewed up to make any more. It’s been a while, but she can work wonders with chlorine or lye.

He’s shirtless, eyes sharper than they are glassy, and he’s obviously not taking enough painkillers. She clucks her tongue, and sits beside him, poking through the pills he’s gotten hold of.

“I don’t need more.”

“Don’t make me hold your nose like a toddler.”

He scowls, not quite sober enough to cover over how very much he despises the idea. 

“You couldn’t hold me.”

She presses the heel of her palm right over his cracked ribs, and he crumples like tin foil, makes a noise like a lost kitten.

He doesn’t acquiesce out loud, just jerks his hand towards top of the bedside table. She asks what he’s had, and makes up a complimentary dose, allowing him to struggle upright enough to swallow them himself.

She stays until he’s conscious again. It’s a much nicer vigil than alternative. Before she goes, he catches her neck, and his palm is dry and warm, pulls her down to kiss him.

Her hand splays over his chest again. It’s not over the broken bones this time, but that doesn’t mean she won’t crush him.

“You have not idea what you’re getting into,” she warns him.

He laughs, then winces, then pretends he didn’t.

“When do I ever?”

She kisses him again.

*

This Halloween, he isn't dead, and she isn't dead. It is their fifth night together. She strokes the hidden curves of his ribs while he sleeps, and he doesn’t stir. She should never have let it go this far. She knows why she did, and that’s why she doesn’t trust herself any more. It is flatly unacceptable.

*

This Guy Fawkes Day, he is dead, and she isn’t. Regret is unprofessional. 

*

This Christmas, she is dead, and he isn’t. He keeps the bulldog in a rotating series of flats, sometimes patting its grotesque little head. He’s got tooth marks all down his hambones, but he’s not chewed up yet. He doesn't tell Mallory, _it was too soon to promote you_ , because it isn't true, not by the time he manages to walk back into that office, and you never say it if it isn't true. But he thinks it, just for a moment. 

*

This New Year's, James Bond is alive and M is alive. At midnight, they do not think of the other.


End file.
